Illegal downloading fight targets corporations - Memo warns companies of employees' downloading

A/P via CNN.com ^ | February 15, 2003 | Associated Press Staff

[MeekOneGOP]

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) --Movie studios and record labels are taking their case against illegal Internet downloads directly to corporations, where much of the offending action allegedly occurs.

The Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America are sending a six-page brochure this week to Fortune 1000 corporations with suggested policies -- including a sample memo to workers warning them against using company computers to download songs and movies.

[MeekOneGOP]

Heads up !

[MeekOneGOP]

fyi...

[ofMagog]

Thank you, wise one.

[MeekOneGOP]

You're welcomed, my FRiend...

[ofMagog]

Our clinic's employees comprehended the concepts involved in patient confidentiality, but sometimes had difficulty concerning their actions reflecting legally and otherwise on the clinic, such as email, faxes, out of office behaviors while wearing clinic identification, etc.

[WFTR]

Many large companies already have policies against internet use that is not work-related. We can check on our stocks, the weather, maybe the schedule for a local sports team, and occasionally check a news site, but we can't just surf at will from a company computer. I don't come to Free Republic from company computers. While I understand this effort, I'd be surprised if it had much effect.

WFTR
Bill

[MeekOneGOP]

It's pretty simple, isn't it? When you're at work, do stuff related to your job. Right? lol !

Those things you detailed should be pretty straight-forward it seems to me. I guess someone in the clinic will have to assume President Bush's tactic of repeating the message until it finally sinks in...

[MeekOneGOP]

bttt

[upchuck]

Once again, RIAA and MPAA beat their collective heads against the wall. Memo to them: Hey guyz, you're jousting with windmills. You're fighting a fight you'll never win. Get smart: change your business model to accomodate KaZaa, WinMX, etc. You'll quickly find most folks will pay (a little, say $1/song) to download. Why not exploit this?

Idiots!!!

[July 4th]

The record companies have nearly missed the boat on the "pay-per-song" revenue model. The old argument used to be that you never knew the quality of what you were downloading. When I was getting MP3s off of FTP sites in 1997, yeah, some were pretty bad. Today, widely-owned pieces of software like MusicMatch do an admirable job of encoding, thus killing the major argument for people paying for quality.

To some extent, there will be people who will pay per song. But the price has to literally be cents - $1 for a song adds up to about $12 for a full CD, and we all know how happy people are about paying retail for music.

The pay services out there also aren't any good right now. There's a chart in a recent issue of Wired, were the author tried to find a list of 20 songs on several different music services. Kazaa was the only free one, and the only one that had all 20 songs. The others weren't even close.

[eno_]

They are going to get sued.

It is a crime to claim copyright and/or patent protection beyond what you actually have. The term is "copyright abuse." When they sue some company where only fair-use activity is going on, the company will countersue, and the RIAA could lose big-time.

In fact, they could be sued on the false claims alone. Running ads with scare tactics is dishonest, and could cost the stations that knowingly run them their broadcast licenses.

[eno_]

You are correct. The price has to fall by about 10X. At $0.10 per unprotected 488kbps Ogg or MP3, people would pay to get a high quality rips, and not have to worry about registering their purchase, etc. Lose a song? Buy another copy.

Look at the price of computers or telecom bandwidth. It is one tenth to one onethousandth what it used to be. Movies on DVD cost a tenth what they used to when the first videodiscs came on the market. Prices do not have to remain where they are. In fact, a price collapse would "solve" most current problems by shrinking them to an insignificant size.

[upchuck]

Thanks for the response. Good food for thought.

The $12 retail is for a CD that contains (maybe) 2 or 3 good songs, 4 or 5 so-so songs and a couple of dogs.

I would gladly pay $1/song to download just the songs I want. Especially if I was guaranteed that the quality of the download was very high.

Imagine the possibilities if RIAA set up a huge database of "every song ever recorded" and allowed you to download what ever you wanted for $1/song. Your music, your way. I think there would be a lot of interest in this.

[eno_]

Imagine the possibilities if RIAA set up a huge database of "every song ever recorded"

The Library of Congress won't even publish out of copyight material for download. You convenience, and the expansion of the cultural heritage, is not part of the RIAA plan.

Heck, I would like it if, for example, Russia would sell all their classical music recordings cheaply online. Once the U.S. IP model is shown to be brittle and subject to outside competition, it will crumble.

[ofMagog]

bump

[ofMagog]

Bump for the Monday crowd.

[ofMagog]

bttt

[ofMagog]

What?
Employees downloading stuff on company time?
That implies that employees are spending time on the internet for personal reasons.
Couldn't be true!

[ofMagog]

BTTT for working folks.